ON THE CUSP OF EKKSTACY

A chaotic weekend on the road with the musician known as Ekkstacy, a 21-year-old Canadian who is tying together two of Gen Z's most pervasive musical threads-emo punk and SoundCloud rap-in a whole new way.

- CHRIS GAYOMALI

NIGHT ONE, everyone agrees, was a total nightmare. 

The scene: The When We Were Young music festival, in Las Vegas, the world's foremost emo-and-pop-punk revivalist destination where the twin forces of nostalgia and capitalism convene to coax bands that peaked in the 2000s-acts like Yellowcard and the Offspring and Bowling for Soup-out of their McMansions for two days of performances in front of a vast ocean of elder millennials who once had gauges and lip piercings but now get sleepy after two beers.

The dilemma: It's nearly 3 p.m. on Sunday and his voice is gone. That would be the voice belonging to the ascendant 21-year-old singer-songwriter Ekkstacy, who, along with his band, represents one of the handful of young acts appearing at the festival here ostensibly to provide variety and also because they can stay up past 10 and fill the later time slots. But there was trouble last night as Ekkstacy's voice started to fray three songs into his set. Ekkstacy, by his own admission, "sounded like shit." It was a bummer of the highest magnitude.

Which is why we-Ekkstacy, his manager, his three bandmates, and I-are now crammed into a Ford Expedition, feverishly racing around Las Vegas in search of a steroid injection to fix his ailing vocal cords.

"I'm worried," says Ekkstacy-or Stacy, when he isn't performing. He's sitting shotgun and his voice sounds soft and gravelly, like it belongs to a retiree who has a memory to share about his first Werther's. Not great for an emerging rock star with a show in a few hours. Behind the wheel, the band's manager, Andrew Mishko, is on the phone dialing every urgent care within a 25-mile radius, but no one seems to have what they need..